AlphaSense

What do you like best about the product?

I like AlphaSense’s auditability most. In my investment banking job, everything needs to be backed up, and it helps me come to my own conclusions instead of relying on AI. I use it to ramp up on companies, run deep research reports with the beta super analyst feature, and figure out company trends. It also aggregates broker research and helps me understand the key debates about a company’s stock. The initial setup was easy.

What do you dislike about the product?

I find that the search results aren’t always the most relevant. I’d like them to be ranked more by relevance.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use AlphaSense to aggregate broker research and understand the key debates about a company’s stock.

What do you like best about the product?

I really like AlphaSense’s innovative spirit. Every few months, there’s a new AI-based innovation, and the generative search gives me a strong AI tool built on high-quality reports. I value the rich outside-in perspective from sources like investment bankers, brokerage houses, and expert interviews. I can build prompts that generate a weekly newsletter to share with colleagues about what’s happening in the external market, and it saves me time creating and summarizing important market news for my stakeholders. I’ve started experimenting with Super Analyst, and I think the recent addition of slide writing is a great initiative.

What do you dislike about the product?

I found AlphaSense's search engine a little challenging to learn at first because of its steep learning curve. And for the generative AI, for a period, I struggled with potential hallucinations. I also wish AlphaSense had more commodity price & volume data, basically supporting market analysis with quantitative figures since AlphaSense already has strong base of qualitative information. The slide-writing feature is a great initiative, but it still feels very primitive. I wish the design and process for producing AI-based slide decks from AlphaSense insights were more refined.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I don’t think AlphaSense solves a business problem for me per se, but it gives me a rich outside-in perspective from professional sources like investment bankers, brokerage houses, and expert interviews to help us in decision making.

What do you like best about the product?

it used to be better — the proprietary data is solid still but the harness is not good

What do you dislike about the product?

We’ve evaluated tools across the spectrum: Capital IQ and FactSet, specialist platforms like BlueFlame, and the top available subscriptions to Claude and ChatGPT, alongside other agentic tools. We use these systems in real investment workflows. My criticism of AlphaSense’s product comes from that comparative experience; my criticism of the organization comes from our interactions with its sales team.

A premium AI platform should earn its place through better retrieval, source traceability, workflow integration and reliable execution. In my experience, AlphaSense increasingly fails that test. Its software layer feels like a harness that diminishes the capabilities of the underlying frontier models: agents and routines struggle to follow their own instructions, workflows require too much supervision, and the overall system feels brittle. When I check whether an agent or routine followed the process I specified, I consistently see errors.

There is an important distinction between having access to capable models and building a capable product around them through a well-designed harness and proprietary data. The quality of the orchestration, context management and execution matters enormously. My experience is that AlphaSense has let the product slip while maintaining a relentless sales effort.

The commercial experience has been perhaps even more disappointing. It feels like boiler-room sales tactics: “Urgent” offers, requests to sign that day and “Let me know ASAP,” paired with a Crunch Fitness–style cancellation policy. A full year automatically renews unless the customer gives 90 days’ notice, even when the product is materially underdelivering. They told us the auto-renewal clause is “core to our business operations.” To me, that makes perfect sense for a company whose product increasingly struggles to justify keeping customers on its own merits.

My takeaway: stay away. Focus on products and services supported by companies that believe in them enough to earn their customers’ continued business. I’m always happy to speak with other PE investors comparing AI tools and share what has and hasn’t worked in our workflows.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

it is causing not solving problems

What do you like best about the product?

Each insight that the AI comes up with is tagged directly to a management quote, financial filing, or other source. This helps me cover any fears of hallucination.

What do you dislike about the product?

There can be some delay, since it takes time to prepare the prompted answers. It’s still a good way to get up to speed, but you should expect some wait times of ~10–20 minutes to get a result.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

The platform helps me automate some tasks like manually pulling filings. This gives me more time to actually analyze the information rather than just aggregating the relevant data.

What do you like best about the product?

I like that every document is available and I can simply ask the tool to refer to select documents and help me with research.

What do you dislike about the product?

I would like the response to also include visuals instead of just text

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Helping me prepare quarterly earnings summaries effectively